Journalism in Canada, and the man with three testicles

[Elok]

Originally posted by Asher
How would you know Elok?

So glad you asked.

A few years ago I got a dictionary of "Depraved and Insulting English" for Xmas. It included such terms as "potvaliant," "mammothrept," and several words with a common root: "triorchid," "anorchous," etc. My dad breeds orchid flowers, so naturally I was curious as to why the flower is named for the root word for testicle. I asked him, and it turns out that the first orchid brought back from the new world reminded some viewer of a scrotum (presumptively it was a paphiopedalum "ladyslipper" orchid), and in those Latin-educated times the name came naturally. With such an odd story, of course I remembered the words.

Odd footnote: The White Stripes song "Blue Orchid" is actually rather funny if you think about it. Jack White presumptively doesn't realize, but he's complaining that his girl is giving him blue balls...

Odd, tangentially-related and less lewd footnote: There's no such thing as a blue orchid. They come in every other color of the rainbow. Some people claim to have bred blue orchids, but they're really more of a drab purple. If you took a white orchid and turned it blue--really blue--you'd have changed its value from less than $100 to damned near priceless. So, depending on perspective, Jack White is either an ingrate or sexually frustrated.

[Asher]

Summary?

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by Asher
Summary?

Orchids are nuts.

[Fake Boris]

Gives a new meaning to Gerry Boulet's song, "je guette la femme d'or/à peau d'orchidée".

[Asher]

Any relation to Robert Goulet?

[Asher]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081031.wblatch31/BNStory/National/home?cid=al_gam_mostview

Hockey coach's alleged victims refuse to speak evil against him in sex case

CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD

From Friday's Globe and Mail

October 31, 2008 at 6:57 AM EDT

Napanee, Ont. — The two former junior hockey players who are the ostensible victims in the David Frost sex-exploitation case came to court here yesterday to pronounce the allegations ridiculous and absolve their former coach of any wrongdoing, let alone any crime.

In the process, they inflicted incalculable damage to the national game - painting it at the junior and college levels as an amoral sexual playground - and casually, in one instance rather cheerfully, tried to obliterate the reputations of their former girlfriends.

While flatly denying Mr. Frost had ever urged them into threesomes or participated in them, the two handsome, well-dressed young men cited as the most regular third in their group sex adventures the one fellow in the whole sordid mess who is safely tucked away in prison in another country - Mike Danton.

The three were members of the now-defunct 1996 Quinte Hawks, then based in nearby Deseronto, Ont., and coached by Mr. Frost, who went on to become an NHL-certified agent.

Their evidence may have sounded the death knell for the case against the portly 41-year-old, as evinced by prosecutor

J. Sandy Tse's dispirited posture by day's end, and the finish of the convoluted investigative road that saw the file handed off from prosecutor to prosecutor and ultimately wind up in the small courthouse here.

When the only supposed "complainants" in a criminal sexual case deny the charges, when the credibility of the key witness has been robustly challenged, when that challenge appears to have registered and resonated with the presiding judge at a judge-alone trial, all would seem to be over but the shouting, or in this case the verdict.

The evidence in the case is now complete, with closing submissions to be made here Monday, and Ontario Court Judge Geoffrey Griffin to deliver his decision Nov. 28.

Mr. Frost is pleading not guilty to four counts of sexual exploitation, the allegations that he perverted the trust of his then-teenage charges by "having threesomes, two-on-one sex" with these two then-16-year-old players and their then-16-year-old girlfriends. Two of the charges allege Mr. Frost directly or indirectly sexually touched the young men himself; two allege that Mr. Frost invited the girls to sexually touch them.

The testimony from the two young men yesterday was alternately galling and heartless.

For instance, the first to take the witness box seriously described his forays into two-on-one sex as "like a bonding thing, with friends and teammates." He appeared oblivious to the fact that in the stereotypical male fantasy, threesomes traditionally involve not two men and a woman, but two women and a man.

He later attended a Canadian university on a hockey scholarship and said that after leaving the junior game, he had had threesomes and foursomes. "I had up to five and six guys with one woman," he said quietly.

The second young man was asked by Mr. Tse if he had not once upon a time, as the judge has heard, pronounced his girl Jennifer as gorgeous. "I wouldn't say that," the young man replied coolly. "I was 16. It worked."

"What worked?" Mr. Tse asked.

"She worked," the young man smirked. "Ever heard the expression 'Beggars can't be choosers'?" He said she was pointed out to him as a likely sexual plaything by a player who "had been with her" previously.

The players, both now 28 and no longer playing hockey at a professional level, were reluctant witnesses who refused to be interviewed by prosecutors beforehand, came to court only after their lawyers made certain their identities would be protected by a publication ban, and testified for the defence.

Compare that to the appearances here of Jennifer and Kristy, the two key young women who testified - because they aren't considered alleged victims since Mr. Frost wasn't their coach and therefore not in a position of authority over them - without guarantee of anonymity. While some media made editorial decisions not to publish their full names, others have, and the two came to court knowing only they had no protection.

Jennifer was in an on-again, off-again relationship with the second player that nonetheless endured for six years; at times she lived with the player, several others and Mr. Frost, either at his Brampton home or at summer cottages, and even briefly lived with the player alone when he was in the professional minor leagues.

Kristy was the first player's girlfriend for the 1996-1997 hockey season.

The sum of their evidence was that their boyfriends did nothing without Mr. Frost's express permission, including having sex, and that within weeks of first sleeping with the players, they were drawn into having threesomes with the coach.

Jennifer said she was once directed by Mr. Frost to have sex with the other alleged player victim. The player said yesterday, "She started coming up to me, fondling me, basically taking my clothes off," and denied Mr. Frost was even there. She also testified Mr. Frost ordered her to have sex with her boyfriend's then-14-year-old brother. Her former boyfriend said yesterday she did that all on her own, and that he wasn't upset because there was a nice symmetry in that she "took my virginity" and then took his brother's.

At one point, the player snapped, "Listen, there's nobody in this courtroom that has more to resent that guy about [Mr. Frost] than me. I want nothing more than to separate myself from him and get on with my life." But, he said, he wasn't going to say that Mr. Frost did something wrong when he didn't.

Curiously, Mr. Danton, already paying the heaviest price for his relationship with Mr. Frost, was a scapegoat here.

He is serving his 7½-year sentence in a New Jersey prison for his role in a bungled murder-for-hire plot four years ago, the intended target Mr. Frost. Yesterday, both of Mr. Danton's former teammates named him as the person with whom they had most of the two-on-one sex with their respective girlfriends, not Mr. Frost.

Arguably, the most revealing moment may have come when Mr. Tse was questioning the second player about an incident in which Mr. Frost physically assaulted one of his teammates, this in a game before an arena full of fans. No fewer than four other witnesses, including other former players and the team's former trainer, have testified they saw the assault, and Mr. Frost in fact later pleaded guilty to it.

But this player said he never saw such a thing, and furiously told Mr. Tse, "I also recall our whole team rallying around that and marching into the police station in Deseronto ... everyone rallied around and not one player saw that assault. And no one spoke about it, if they did."

The motto on the shield in Judge Griffin's courtroom reads Honi soit qui mal y pense, French for Evil to him that thinks evil. Evil to him who won't speak evil might have fit better.

[Elok]

Summary?

[-Jrabbit]

Frost will walk.

[Winston]

Asher will post even more articles on Frost.

[Asher]

And you keep coming back for more, you closet Danish homosexual hockey player.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Elok
Summary?

Apparently it's normal for hockey players to have orgies with 5, 6 guys and 1 girl. It's bonding (I wonder if he meant bondage?)

[KrazyHorse]

Stop imposing your fantasies on the rest of us...

[Asher]

It's all true, no fantasies here.